Quotes from Paul P. Harris

Individuals and nations owe it to themselves and the world to become informed.

The lawlessness of frontier life in America has been pictured as a remarkable phenomenon. In reality, it was the natural consequence of indiscriminate mixing of volatile substances.

Ignorance is a menace to peace.

Permanent superiority has never been realized by any nation in history. After the rise comes the fall.

The nation that is supreme above all others during one age, will be eclipsed by another in the next age.

The very strength of a nation eventually proves to be its weakness.

One's religion is one's own possession and he has a right to it.

Many obstacles to the expansion of good will have presented themselves.

One's nativity is not of his own choosing, but whatever it may be, it is entitled to respect; and all nations have honorable place in the world's family.

It has been the way of Rotary to focus thought upon matters in which members are in agreement, rather than upon matters in which they are in disagreement.

The less one knows, the more he thinks he knows, and the more willing he is to employ any and all measures to enforce his views upon others.

How strange it is that murder has the sanction of law in one and only one of the human relationships, and that is the most important of all, that of nation to nation.

In course of time, religion came with its rites invoking the aid of good spirits which were even more powerful than the bad spirits, and thus for the time being tempered the agony of fears.

There is nothing in the genius of America more precious today than the spirit of religious and political tolerance in its application to our own people.

It did not come naturally; in fact, it would be difficult to conceive of any more dogmatic and less tolerant people than the first settlers on New England shores.

If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.

Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty.

Ideas have unhinged the gates of empires.

In the clashes between ignorance and intelligence, ignorance is generally the aggressor.

The higher the general average of intelligence, all things else being equal, the less the disposition to be meddlesome, critical, and overbearing.

Singing is not indulged in by Rotary clubs of some countries and all clubs are given full privilege to do as they please about including it in their programs.

Segregation never brought anyone anything except trouble.

Much responsibility rests upon the shoulders of the song leader; it is not infrequently within his power to make or break a meeting.

In the cold, shivering twilight, preceding the daybreak of civilization, the dominating emotion of man was fear.